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The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez

Counting is a complex cognitive process that is paramount to arithmetical development at school. The improvement of counting skills of children depends on their understanding of the logical and conventional rules involved. While the logical rules are mandatory and related to one-to-one correspondenc...

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Autores principales: Lago, Ma Oliva, Escudero, Ana, Dopico, Cristina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8202410/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34135796
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.593509
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author Lago, Ma Oliva
Escudero, Ana
Dopico, Cristina
author_facet Lago, Ma Oliva
Escudero, Ana
Dopico, Cristina
author_sort Lago, Ma Oliva
collection PubMed
description Counting is a complex cognitive process that is paramount to arithmetical development at school. The improvement of counting skills of children depends on their understanding of the logical and conventional rules involved. While the logical rules are mandatory and related to one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinal principles, conventional rules are optional and associated with social customs. This study contributes to unravel the conceptual understanding of counting rules of children. It explores, with a developmental approach, the performance of children on non-routine counting detection tasks, their confidence in their answers (metacognitive monitoring skills), and their ability to change a wrong answer by deferring to the opinion of a unanimous majority who justified or did not justify their claims. Hundred and forty nine children aged from 5 to 8 years were randomized to one of the experimental conditions of the testimony of teachers: with (n = 74) or without justification (n = 75). Participants judged the correctness of different types of counting procedures presented by a computerized detection task, such as (a) pseudoerrors that are correct counts where conventional rules are violated (e.g., first counting six footballs, followed by other six basketballs that were interspersed along the row), and (b) compensation errors that are incorrect counts where logical rules were broken twice (e.g., skipping the third element of the row and then labeling the sixth element with two number words, 5 and 6). Afterwards, children rated their confidence in their detection answer with a 5-point scale. Subsequently, they listened to the testimony of the teachers and showed either conformity or non-conformity. The participants considered both compensation errors and pseudoerrors as incorrect counts in the detection task. The analysis of the confidence of children in their responses suggested that they were not sensitive to their incorrect performance. Finally, children tended to conform more often after hearing a justification of the testimony than after hearing only the testimonies of the teachers. It can be concluded that the age range of the evaluated children failed to recognize the optional nature of conventional counting rules and were unaware of their misconceptions. Nevertheless, the reasoned justifications of the testimony, offered by a unanimous majority, promoted considerable improvement in the tendency of the children to revise those misconceptions.
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spelling pubmed-82024102021-06-15 The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez Lago, Ma Oliva Escudero, Ana Dopico, Cristina Front Psychol Psychology Counting is a complex cognitive process that is paramount to arithmetical development at school. The improvement of counting skills of children depends on their understanding of the logical and conventional rules involved. While the logical rules are mandatory and related to one-to-one correspondence, stable order, and cardinal principles, conventional rules are optional and associated with social customs. This study contributes to unravel the conceptual understanding of counting rules of children. It explores, with a developmental approach, the performance of children on non-routine counting detection tasks, their confidence in their answers (metacognitive monitoring skills), and their ability to change a wrong answer by deferring to the opinion of a unanimous majority who justified or did not justify their claims. Hundred and forty nine children aged from 5 to 8 years were randomized to one of the experimental conditions of the testimony of teachers: with (n = 74) or without justification (n = 75). Participants judged the correctness of different types of counting procedures presented by a computerized detection task, such as (a) pseudoerrors that are correct counts where conventional rules are violated (e.g., first counting six footballs, followed by other six basketballs that were interspersed along the row), and (b) compensation errors that are incorrect counts where logical rules were broken twice (e.g., skipping the third element of the row and then labeling the sixth element with two number words, 5 and 6). Afterwards, children rated their confidence in their detection answer with a 5-point scale. Subsequently, they listened to the testimony of the teachers and showed either conformity or non-conformity. The participants considered both compensation errors and pseudoerrors as incorrect counts in the detection task. The analysis of the confidence of children in their responses suggested that they were not sensitive to their incorrect performance. Finally, children tended to conform more often after hearing a justification of the testimony than after hearing only the testimonies of the teachers. It can be concluded that the age range of the evaluated children failed to recognize the optional nature of conventional counting rules and were unaware of their misconceptions. Nevertheless, the reasoned justifications of the testimony, offered by a unanimous majority, promoted considerable improvement in the tendency of the children to revise those misconceptions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8202410/ /pubmed/34135796 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.593509 Text en Copyright © 2021 Lago, Escudero and Dopico. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lago, Ma Oliva
Escudero, Ana
Dopico, Cristina
The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title_full The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title_fullStr The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title_full_unstemmed The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title_short The Relationship Between Confidence and Conformity in a Non-routine Counting Task With Young Children: Dedicated to the Memory of Purificación Rodríguez
title_sort relationship between confidence and conformity in a non-routine counting task with young children: dedicated to the memory of purificación rodríguez
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8202410/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34135796
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.593509
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